Rawson School Closing For At Least 2 Years

Twain, Fisher Schools To Absorb Students

June 12, 2002|By RACHEL GOTTLIEB; Courant Staff Writer

To the child's eye, Rawson School is perfect. For more than 80 years, students and their teachers have walked through its heavy doors into broad, tiled hallways lined with brick walls and splashed with sunshine from large, multi-paned windows.

For 80 years, Rawson has been a central anchor on Holcomb Street in the Blue Hills neighborhood. The school buzzes with activities until 10 each night.

But Tuesday, parents, teachers and students such as third-grader Iesha Gainey learned that their school will close in June for at least two years.

School officials cite some good reasons for closing it: It will save $1.2 million in a year when a budget crunch is threatening teaching and guidance positions and all-day kindergarten in the district. Plus, the aging building is in dire need of renovations, which it will get while closed.

None of that matters, however, to Iesha, who said, ``I don't want it to change. If they change it, I won't remember it.''

Fourth-grader Joseph Rivera also was uneasy about the change and about making new friends in a new school come fall.

``I've been in this school for seven years and I know a lot of people in the school,'' he said. ``I'll be nervous'' about making friends.

One of two elementary schools in the city with a federal 21st Century Grant for $125,000 a year, Rawson is open late each night, home to activities run by The Village for Families and Children. After school, there are homework and tutoring lessons, then computer, art, counseling and parenting programs. Since the school's 300 students will be split roughly between Mark Twain and Annie Fisher schools -- both nearby -- it isn't clear where The Village program will move, but Rawson Principal Gerald Martin said it probably will go to Twain School.

To make room for the Rawson students, around 100 to 120 Fisher students will be transferred to nearby Martin Luther King School. And to make room there, some King students will be transferred to nearby Simpson-Waverly School.

Rawson parents learning of the closing for the first time Tuesday said they were sad, too, because they like Rawson's teachers and have faith in its administrators. The school, which serves mainly West Indian and African American students, consistently ranks in the top 10 in the city on the Connecticut Mastery Test. The first year after Superintendent of Schools Anthony Amato hit town and pledged that Hartford would never rank last in the state again on the tests, Rawson won kudos for making the greatest single-year test score gains in the city.

Administrators and state-appointed trustees have pleaded with the state for more money and said up to three schools could close if the legislature doesn't increase funding. Increases in the education funding formula make it unlikely that any more schools will close, but any more appropriations coming through this year won't come until after the school year ends in June.

When it reopens, Rawson will add a seventh and eighth grade and more than double its enrollment to as many as 700 students, Martin said. It will have a new gym, new classrooms large enough to accommodate both computers and students to use them, a large multipurpose room with a good sound system and a heating system that will neither broil nor freeze the building's inhabitants as the current system does. The new wing will have air conditioning.

Martin met with teachers after school Tuesday to tell them what he could about the move. No teachers will lose their jobs, he told them, but it is not yet clear where they will be assigned. Some will go to Annie Fisher and Twain, but not necessarily all of them. It is not clear where Martin will land, either. Kennelly Elementary School, consistently one of the top scorers on the mastery tests, is losing its new principal, Linda Demikat, after one year, so Martin may go there. But a host of other schools have acting first-year principals and he may take over for one of them, he said.

Tuesday, though, the focus was on getting the news out in the least frightening way possible. ``This is a real trying time for all of us. I'm really counting on you,'' Martin told the teachers. ``I expected to walk in here and have all hell break loose.''

Instead, he told the teachers that their professionalism and their peaceful acceptance of the news impressed him. ``I want you to communicate a calmness. Students listen to that and parents listen to that. ... Here's our opportunity to get a renovated, modern, state-of-the-art school. ... This whole community will benefit.''

Teachers asked about logistics -- when to pack up, what to put in storage, whether the details will be worked out in time to record new classroom numbers for students on their final report cards. Martin said he expects to know student assignments in the next few days. So far, he knows that students who live north of Holcomb Street will go to Twain and those who live to the south will go to Fisher. Next Tuesday, yellow buses will take the students to their new schools for a tour.